Sunday, September 23, 2012

Hasty Sale to Foreigners, Americans Holding the Bag

China New owner of scandal-ridden American Digital Domain

I imagine that John C.Textor, aka the
Bernie Madoff of South Florida, is grateful
that he had the foresight to build his home on an island just off the coast of Florida. Especially as more light is shed on his shady dealings of last week.

He will
still need an electric fence and shark-infested waters to ward off the countless lawyers and processors tring to serve him an array of subpoena.

Textor will need the privacy

One week after Digital Domain suddenly filed for bankruptcy, the hardest working people
on Florida’s TreasureCoast
are newly arrived lawyers and accountants.They have been pouring through the remains of Digital Domain to see
if there is anything worth saving. On Friday, they filed law suits to avoid an “accelerated
asset sale” to give them time to sort out the multi-layered scandal spread before them.

But on
Saturday, in another surprise twist, the bankruptcy judge in Delaware ruled that Digital Domain could
complete a “snap auction” deal.

The foreign buyers
comprise two large vfx firms who will pick up American intellectual property for about a dime to the dollar in what amounts to a fire sale.

Digital’s
most experienced vfx firms in Venice, California and Vancouver,
British Columbia, will be part of
the sale.

The expensive proprietary software and human capital will in large part
disappear from South Florida, as well as haunt the American visual
effects industry for decades.

In the wake of the Digital Domain scandal, Carrol wondered if the town would ever approve another investment proposal, even in another field, like biotech.We've got to ask ourselves down the road, 'Are we inheriting this as our redheaded stepchild forever or do we call a halt to it and say (to the other council members) that at some point you have to become self sufficient and act like any other business," he said of his colleagues."They've all got the Boca dream. Unfortunately, they've got a Port St. Lucie wallet.' "

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My intention as a writer is to be happy and inspired. My challenge is to change moribund and banal narratives buried in traditional thinking. I think inspiration is what keeps an artist involved in the process of creativity, not rationale.